The Actress (1953)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) While adapted from the life of actress-playwright Ruth Gordon, The Actress (despite being scripted by Gordon herself) aims for amiable family comedy more than biographical sketch. By using Spencer Tracy as the sometimes-goofy family patriarch, it’s likely that director George Cukor meant to evoke fresh good of his then-fresh turns in Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend. The theatrical origins of the story aren’t readily apparent in the film’s eagerness to vary locations, but the quality of the dialogue is there. Still, the film does feel (especially seventy years later) like a small-scale domestic comedy. The biggest conflict is whether the family will accept the daughter’s dream of becoming an actress, and this being a Classical Hollywood movie, you can guess how that ends. There’s an affectionate component to the film’s look back to 1913 Massachusetts, and an amiable tone to the family’s small-scale troubles. Anthony Perkins shows up (in his debut) as a would-be suitor. The Actress, in many ways, is charming in its mediocrity—something to watch if you haven’t got enough of Tracy’s patrician roles.